[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[Nekira Sudacne]

Another thought: I don't know why RB's House Rules as it were shook out the way they did, but why does current diplo rules forbid ANY form of co-ordination? You've taken diplomacy down to a pantomime.

"Offer 5 gold per turn for 5 gold per turn. what is this? is this a NAP that lasts for 5 turns? A warning you'll declare war on a neighbor in 5 turns? an invitation to join in 5 turns? And there is absolutely no way to ask someone to send a stack twords the same city"

I get that Full blown diplomacy can lead to total silliness as seen in the first few RB pitboss games (Hi pratorean world tour), but even single line diplomacy can improve things.

Asking someone to help you in a war should not require a game of Charades just to hope they MIGHT know what you are talking about.

Basically three factors.
1.  It became clear that diplomatic success was more important than success at running your civilization.    When people signed up for a game of civ, they want the focus to be running the civilization.  With sufficient deniability and confusion, the role of diplomacy is lessened.  
2.  It also became clear that diplomatic success required a lot of time and effort.  To keep in the loop, you needed to have conversations with all your opponents all the time.  A Pitboss game is already a huge investment of time; people didn't want it to keep growing.
3.  It's a lot easier to remain friends with someone who's invaded you if you didn't already have a promise from them that they would never do that.  Also a lot easier to make friends with someone who's simply outplayed you than with someone who's arranged for you to be an outcast.

For those who really want the diplomatic game, we still have games for that: werewolf and Diplomacy.  Notably, to succeed, you still need to spend all your free time on the game while it's running, but these games typically last days or weeks instead of months, so people don't get quite as worn out.  Also, note that both games have explicit disclaimers up front that lying is expected, and you should do your darnedest to remember that Scooter, Kaiser of Germany, is a persona for Scooter, Fellow RB'er.

Okay, that does do a lot to clear it up. I still think this is not an entirely satisfactory solution, but i'm not sure it's a problem that will have an entirely satisfactory solution either.

[Mardoc]

I still think this is not an entirely satisfactory solution, but i'm not sure it's a problem that will have an entirely satisfactory solution either.

I agree on both fronts.  The main advantage of AI Diplo is that it's a Schelling Point.  Everyone knows what you mean.  I'm sure there's a slightly better ruleset that could be invented, but it would be a lot of effort to come up with and convince everyone to switch to it, for a marginal gain.

[scooter]

Whew. A lot happened in here over the weekend. I'll try to address some of the big ones.

* I don't approve of your suggested Great Engineer plans. Who cares if we're getting +200% production modifiers on the Statue of Liberty build? Burn that Great Engineer and get the Statue ASAP!!! There's no wonder more important to our plans than the Statue, and there's no reason to take any risk of losing it from something weird happening. How many turns does the Engineer save on the build, something like 5 or 6 turns (?) We can run a Representation Scientist (or a Spy via the Altars) in essentially every city, so that's close to 100 beakers in our 15+ cities, INDEPENDENT of the commerce slider, from all those free specialists. Not to mention, that would also free up the capital to build Oxford that much faster, because it isn't slowed down by the need to sit around manually building the Statue. (FYI the formula for the Great Engineer's free production is 500 + 20 * pop.)

Don't be too clever here! We went to all the trouble of generating that Engineer for a reason. Great Engineers are terrible for lightbulbs, corporations are bad compared to State Property, and you know what helps generate Great People for future Golden Ages? FREE SPECIALISTS IN EVERY CITY!   I would stick to the original plan here. 

I checked and turns out it speeds the Statue by 8 turns. Um, yeah, that's a no-brainer. 8 turns of over a dozen Rep specialists + 8 turns of Oxford is exceedingly obvious. Chalk that one up to over-thinking it.

---

Re: the dogpile Mackoti comments - I think some of you are drastically underestimating REM's position. He's going to have Rifles in like 5 turns tops. Mackoti might be about to have a bunch of land, but his tech is still horrible, and REM's monk trio is absurdly strong. I'm serious when I say everything's on the table as far as I'm concerned, but I'm not even 100% convinced Mackoti is in the best position. Really, I'm hoping the two will be forced to confront each other soon, and I can be opportunistic one way or another.


As for the diplo comments: coordinating is not THAT hard anyway. If you pay attention, you can coordinate a bit just by figuring out who wants what. For example, I predicted that Mackoti would invade Alhazard while he was still at war with RMoG just by looking at his boat positioning. If I was in REM's position, I would have used that info to whip out a bunch of knights or something and get in position to profit from that.

[antisocialmunky]

What do you think of taking control of the land between you Plako while Mackoti is distracted?

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 247–248: REASON PREVAILS

The Aztecs will elect to accelerate the Statue of Liberty with a great engineer, to earn themselves some additional turns of research and an earlier deadline for Oxford. They need all the science they can muster, because the Khmer Empire is speeding through replaceable parts, leveraging their religious wonders into a future widespread draft of rifles, and now it is only a question of who will bleed from this unprecedented edge. The Aztecs hope that it will be Byzantium, who are of inferior technology and are exposed with their extended Dutch-Ottoman front. Byzantium hasn't yet destroyed the Ottomans' will, who are levying all their reserves to repair the rupture of their interior, but it is unclear what are their chances of survival without outside intervention. How will the Khmer's involvement be to the Aztecs' advantage? Warfare between the twin leaders would allow the Aztecs to fully pursue the disruption of either one of its neighbours: England or Byzantium. The unpleasant feature of this privilege is that no matter how much stronger the Aztecs become through this struggle, the Khmer Empire will likely be stronger still, a situation that mirrors the lategame of PB33.

[scooter]

Turn 247-248



Mackoti checked in to confirm we still have 20T of peace "guaranteed." There's a good chance I'll follow this, and there's a good chance he will too. That seems like a fair way to summarize that . Updates from the front:





Total destruction. Remember boys and girls, when your neighbor has the best 2-mover in the game, build yourself some dang Pikes. This is not a suggestion.

Notice that Mackoti swapped to Gunpowder. Notice also that REM is pushing obscenely fast to Rifles. Somebody wants Pinch very badly because he's afraid of drafted Rifles incoming. I also can't help but notice Mackoti has diverted away from his Communism path. Hmmm.



Two big builds going on right now, and this is one of them. Silly that I can score a 9F surplus in a hammer config, but there's a lot of silly things in this game.



(No, growing to size 10 to get the extra 20h on the Engineer is not worth it.)

The engineer takes 8T off this, so mentally this has 5T remaining. Another 4-5T or so will get us Oxford. (I will go with a less extreme tile config for Oxford because I can simply run 0% there.) I think we need to grow up about 5-6 sizes to get to an ideal configuration (there will be some serious scientists), and the triple food will help that a lot. I thought pretty seriously about sticking National Epic here for that reason exactly, but honestly it seems good here to have dueling great people-capable cities. That's not necessarily typical, but the food counts aren't typical here.



RMoG picked up Astro, and they're getting Gunpowder next. Being prickly seems to be their goal. Plako did get himself Constitution. I have to think a golden age is coming soon from him. He's definitely in 4th place, but with redcots coming up soon, he's still in this game. He's going to need some luck, but then again so will I.

Alhazard did complete Scientific Method. He's still going to die because he brought longbows and Caste to a Phract fight. Poor guy.



Still whipping more frequently than I'm used to, especially in newer cities. The thing that this really opens up is 1-pop whipping. With the happy penalty irrelevant, it's no longer essential to line up whips to be 2 population. Instead I tend to do a lot of 1 pop whips with the foodbox/surplus lined up for automatic regrowths. If the foodbox is fairly full and the surplus is strong, I can whip something like 7 -> 6 -> 7 in the same turn. While I'm constructing buildings, essentially I'm trading a delayed growth for 45h (30 + forge + OR). It's no accident I've got a million cities hovering around size 6.

I did probably overbuild workers a tiny bit. I overestimated the number of improved tiles I'd need ever so slightly.

[scooter]

What do you think of taking control of the land between you Plako while Mackoti is distracted?

Are you talking like capturing islands or what?

I've thought about it. It's possible if I can do it before redcoats because I'll have Galleons way before him. Drawback is that screwing with Plako is more likely to backfire due to it putting him into the "nothing to lose" zone where people are more likely to play for revenge. For a different example, Mackoti could safely poke my eyes earlier because I still have something to play for. Anyway, it's a legit option I'm considering, but I don't think it's a great option. I think there are better ones out there.

[Nekira Sudacne]

A worker surpluss of labor is one of the best problems to have in this game!

Just have the Extra's cutting down jungle and start throwing up workshops/cotteges. You'll need 'em eventually!

[picklepikkl]

You, er, seem to have offered to trade 20 gpt for 20g flat.

[antisocialmunky]

What do you think of taking control of the land between you Plako while Mackoti is distracted?

Are you talking like capturing islands or what?

I've thought about it. It's possible if I can do it before redcoats because I'll have Galleons way before him. Drawback is that screwing with Plako is more likely to backfire due to it putting him into the "nothing to lose" zone where people are more likely to play for revenge. For a different example, Mackoti could sahttp://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/editpost.php?pid=613901fely poke my eyes earlier because I still have something to play for. Anyway, it's a legit option I'm considering, but I don't think it's a great option. I think there are better ones out there.

Who is going to be on the menu then?